By Sister Catherine Cleary, OSB

Tomorrow we begin Lent. If you are like me, you have a tendency to think, My prayers, almsgiving and fasting are just the thing. They will make God love me more.  Make more things go my way.

WRONG! Our Lenten resolutions cannot have their proper effect unless our motives for practicing them spring from personal prayer. They must spring from the transforming power of our Love of God and others. Otherwise our sacrifices tend to be mere acts of external routine performed in order to exorcise interior anxiety (or to lose weight) and not for the sake of love.

In other words the motive counts. It must come from the depths of our being, from self-abandonment and self-forgetfulness.

Blessings this Lent.